Month: October 2011

More Maxims of Methuselah Moot

/ W. Keith Brenton / 1 Comment

Methuselah MootRobert Heinlein chronicled a far-flung future’s The Notebooks of Lazarus Long; a few years later, David Gerrold responded with the often-hilarious and equally-irreverent Sayings of Solomon Short. That was all years ago, so I have decided at last to reveal More Maxims of Methuselah Moot (although some of them go back as far as the Greek philosopher-humorist Idontwantnunades).

It is merely coincidental that most if not all are 140 characters or less.

  • I always like getting the last word. Tonight I thought I’d be generous and share it: zyzzyva. You’re welcome.
  • Because of the prior claim staked by the public relations field on the initials “P.R.,” political rhetoric may now be abbreviated “B.S.”
  • Is the sudden surge of sea salt-seasoned foods threatening the salinity of oceans & all life in them? I think #theonion should investigate.
  • #quickbio Carrie Nation: a healthy-sized 19th-20th Century gal who got really hacked off about alcohol abuse.
  • I don’t want to want stuff but I want stuff more than I want to not want stuff so I have more stuff than I want but I want even more stuff.
  • I admire the spunk of all you folks Meeting at the Pole this morning. But it’s, like, 4000 miles to the Pole and I’ve got to get to work.
  • I want a “Life is Good” t-shirt. But I want it to say, “Life is Pretty Good. Afterlife is Better.”
  • You have an American, God-given right to be as afraid as you want to be. But perfect love beats fear every time.
  • For some reason, the song that won’t leave my head today is “Amazing Grace” … to the tune of “House of the Rising Sun.” And I like it.
  • I think it’s getting easier for me to see others as people Jesus died for. Until they get behind the wheel of a car. Still working on that.
  • I’m watching educational TV (AFV). I learned: If it involves a ramp & bike, ladder, tree & chainsaw, or panel-side pool … don’t do it.
  • I don’t want to brag, but social networking online was originally my idea. It’s just that ElbowBook never took off. #soclose
  • Just in: NASA Launches Fall Season With Falling Satellite / Hopes to Reach One In 3,800 With Personal Reminder
  • Aw, heck, CERN; I’ve received neutrinos the past few years that I haven’t even fired from my accelerator yet. That’s just neutrinos for ya.
  • Working on my aluminum foil skullcap for tomorrow – protection from the falling satellite and the invasion of telepathic aliens after. #2fer
  • I’d like advance warning when it’s “Turn Left in Front of Oncoming Traffic Day.” (Three times on the way to work.)
  • Cannibalism in the Bible: “If you keep on biting and devouring each other, watch out or you will be destroyed by each other.” – Gal. 5:15
  • Do I become irrelevant if I confess that Facebook’s changes don’t matter to me at all? Or was I already irrelevant?
  • If I quit Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ … would I even miss me? Schizophrenic minds want to know.
  • Looking forward to being merged with a falling NASA satellite Friday like the hapless Rick from “Northern Exposure.”
  • To divide the church is to deny reality; Christ prayed/gave His Spirit to make us one. We need only maintain that reality, bonded in peace.
  • It was on a tree in Eden that death hung disguised as the fruit of knowledge, and on a crosstree of death that Life bore the fruit of love.
  • Not sure I’m up for today. Let me check. Yeah, I’m out of bed and standing. I guess I am up for today.
  • Grace and obedience are opposite sides of the same coin. We obey out of gratitude for grace. We show grace to others by obedience.
  • “Oh, I’ve got the wrong number.” “That’s okay. I always slept through the numbers part of ‘Sesame Street,’ too.”
  • “Oh, I’ve called the wrong person.” “No, I’m always right. If you’re looking for the wrong person, let me connect you to my ex.”
  • “Oh, I’ve got the wrong number.” “Well, maybe, but I wouldn’t attach too much moral significance to a string of numerals.”
  • “Oh, I’ve called the wrong number.” “Well, if you knew it was the wrong number, why did you call it?”
  • “Oh, I must have the wrong number.” “Well, if it’s something you must have, this is certainly the wrong number.”
  • Thomas Edison’s actual words on the first telephone call: “What’s up? Comb hair. I need jute.” #crazyoldguy #poorsoundquality
  • Pondering John the Baptist. Think about it: if you wore camel’s hair and ate bugs you’d probably be alone out crying in the wilderness, too.
  • Hats off to worldwise little ones who want to wear rubber boots even when it’s not raining. You never know when you might step in something.
  • Some minister friends defend their shaved heads: “Try it; you’ll never go back.” But I don’t buy that “once-shaved, always-shaved” stuff.
  • I shot a 44 on the first nine holes, but the golf course folks shooed me away and said next time I should bring clubs and balls, not a gun.
  • The way people bring us their extra snack food at the church office, you’d think we were all starving and indigent. #nothardly
  • I was an odd child. Which is totally unfair; it should have been my older and younger sisters who were odd. They were born first and third.
  • I should have my own HGTV show: “How To Do All Those Things Around The House That You’ll Never Do Because You’re Too Busy Watching HGTV.”
  • A useful phrase for parents of pre-teens: “How many ways would like to hear me say ‘no’?”
  • It may not be a scripturally-sustainable philosophy, but if the world could end at any moment, why not go ahead and have the cheese dip?
  • This is my favorite time of day: when I am feeling so overwhemed that I just sit back, relax, and pretend that I don’t exist.
  • I’ve heard it said, “This is no time to panic!” But what better time is there to panic than when reality is crashing down all around you?
  • How many people are we believers hoping to win to the love of Christ by acting like total jerks today?
  • If you have time to talk in depth about Madonna and hydrangeas, you may have too much time on your hands.
  • Making fun of Social Security is easy for rich people. For the rest, it’s the only security they have in a world where they are expendable.
  • I am the object at rest which tends to stay at rest. Upholding Newton’s Law 1a is my life. I don’t know about 1b or motion, just resting.
  • I mean if someone has spent a lifetime living hell-bent on being hellbound, will God not grant what that one has desired and lived for?
  • In the end, love wins. God wins. But that does not necessarily mean that He gets everything He wants. (Which sounds pretty selfish, really.)
  • There’s a significant percentage of my time on Twitter and Facebook that is enabled by Windows Update and Apple Software Update. Just FYI.
  • I have a new marketing motto for the folks at Huffington Post: “You Heard It First … Somewhere Else.”
  • Exhaling is the last thing I’d want to do.

It has been said that all of these are moot points, and I would find it difficult to disagree. However, if you would like to experience them as they are revealed by the great cosmic consciousness known as the Flying Spaghetti Monster, all you have to do is follow keith_brenton at Twitter.com.

I Would Like to Stop Being a Jerk Now

/ W. Keith Brenton / 21 Comments

No, my blog hasn’t been hacked. This is really me posting, and I would like to stop being a jerk now.

I would like to stop being so opinionated, so convinced of my own rightness, so judgmental and condescending and achingly starved for affirmation that I will stop letting it all boil out of me like pungent acid onto everyone I encounter.

I know deep down that it’s going to cost me the luxury of making snide comments at others’ expense which strike me as funny … and correcting and belittling them … and getting the credit for some things I might have actually done right.

And the whole thought of it just gives me the willies and sends an icy sharp pang of panic down my spine.

Because I have tried before and failed.

The truth is, what I’m wanting to give up is exactly who I am. And that is never something that should be considered or done lightly.

I want to be Someone else, but since I can’t be, I want to be open to Him through His Spirit. I want to be like Him. I want to give Him full use of not only hands and feet but heart and head and mouth.

That is not who I am, and it frightens me all the way to the center of my empty pointless self to admit it.

I want so much to be able to do it myself, and I can’t because I’m empty. It isn’t within me. I need help.

Because I am too often blind and deaf to the things He shows and says to me, I need your help.

I need you to tell me when I am still being a jerk.

I need you let me know when I am not funny but judgmental and unloving and selfish and cruel.

I mean it. Even if I melt in a puddle. I need to know.

Because I can’t trust me anymore.

I am a jerk.

And I don’t want to be a jerk anymore.

Jesus and War

/ W. Keith Brenton / 9 Comments

You will hear of wars and rumors of wars, but see to it that you are not alarmed. Such things must happen, but the end is still to come. ~ Matthew 24:6

I am always a little amazed when someone brings up a verse or two — like the one above — to justify a Christian’s involvement in war.

That verse and its parallel in Mark 13:7 are in the middle of Jesus’ prediction of circumstances that will characterize but not necessarily herald the end of time and His return. They are prophecy; not a command to take arms — no more than this verse:

Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. ~ Matthew 10:34

This is a snippet from a larger conversation about how even families will be split apart by the truth about who Jesus is; and the importance of standing by the truth rather than acquiescing to family loyalties and denying the truth. Here, the truth is the sword which rends families asunder (Luke 21:15-19). (It is a metaphor Paul and the writer to the Hebrews — inspired by the Spirit of Christ — pursue in Ephesians 6:17 and Hebrews 4:12).

Then Jesus asked them, “When I sent you without purse, bag or sandals, did you lack anything?”

“Nothing,” they answered.

He said to them, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. It is written: ‘And he was numbered with the transgressors’; and I tell you that this must be fulfilled in me. Yes, what is written about me is reaching its fulfillment.” ~ Luke 22:35-38

The disciples said, “See, Lord, here are two swords.”

“That’s enough!” he replied.

It is an assumption that Jesus advises the purchase of a sword here in order to fight a physical battle or for self-protection. Two swords would hardly have defended twelve men, and He pronounced them sufficient. However, one sword was sufficient to sever the ear of a servant at His arrest, and give Him the opportunity to perform one last miracle that should have testified to all present and arresting or defending Him of who He is, and by what power He spoke the truth (47-53). In those verses, His command is “No more of this!” — and He contrasts those who wield weapons to arrest Him as if He were leading a rebel posse rather than teaching disciples as He had in the temple courts.

Two swords among twelve would also have been sufficient — assuming that they would flee together — to provide food for them in the wild, where He had just advised them to go (in the previous chapter, Luke 21:21) in order to escape the tumult that was to come.

And writing of the tumult that was to come, John of Patmos describes the unnamed Jesus three times as a princely hero bearing a sword (Revelation 1:16; 2:12-16; 19:15-21). All three times that sword is pictured as proceeding from His mouth. This, again, is the sword of truth — against which those who lie (and believe lies rather than the truth) have no defense whatsoever. This is, again, a highly prophetic passage with language appropriate to prophecy. The war described is indeed a cosmic one in eternity, and the battlefield is not on any literal plain on earth, but in the human heart. (2 Corinthians 10:3; 1 Peter 2:11).

If we who believe cannot win in our own hearts that battle of love for survival of self at the cost of God and the lives of others — if we cling so tenaciously to this life and all of its possessions, attractions, political affiliations, nationalistic loyalties, ideological idolatries — how can we hope to enlist in His army to assist others with the battle in their hearts?

But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. ~ Matthew 5:44-48

Let me ask something: When Jesus says “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you,” does He mean before or after running them through with your bayonet?

“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also.” ~ Matthew 5:38-39

When the Savior says “Turn the other cheek,” does He mean make sure of their intentions before you beat the very life out of them?

“You have heard that it was said to the people long ago, ‘You shall not murder, and anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’ But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.” ~ Matthew 5:21-22

When He says “Anyone who is angry with a brother or sister will be subject to judgment,” does He mean that it’s okay to murder if you do it dispassionately, without any anger at all toward your victim?

Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. ~ Matthew 5:12

Does He imply that it’s okay to persecute others for their unrighteousness because the kingdom of heaven is yours?

Blessed are the peacemakers,
for they will be called children of God. ~ Matthew 5:11

Does He mean that warmongers will also be called children of God?

Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy. ~ Matthew 5:7

Does He imply that the invasion of other nations, confiscation of their properties, wholesale slaughter of their uninvolved citizenry as well as their armed forces — all of that is an exceedingly great mercy when used to rescue them from a disagreeable and unprofitable government or religion or philosophy?

I’m not writing this to argue for or against a “just war” doctrine, or whether a Christian can object to or participate in a war. Those are, by definition, issues of individual conscience and you will have to make up your mind about them on your own.

I’m just asking whether the whole concept of physical war in this world with weapons and intentions that mutilate and murder and destroy are consistent with the picture of Jesus’ life and teachings as they are revealed in scripture.

When we use scripture out of context and for our own purposes of proof, aren’t we contorting it beyond the use and meaning it was originally meant to have?

If that’s true, and we can all agree on that, doesn’t it follow that Jesus came to this world to bring the sword of truth that would render asunder the hearts and souls of men, cleave precious relationships — and also surgically create new and eternal ones — based on a gospel about a God of love willing to sacrifice what was most precious to Him in order to reconcile Himself to those by whom He wanted to be regarded as most precious and beloved?